


We will see each other

by CourageKitten



Category: SCP Foundation, Splatoon
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/F, May not adhere to SCP canon, My First AO3 Post, OC is Agent 8, Octo Expansion Spoilers, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Takes place during Octo Expansion, shameless self insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-05-29 02:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15062918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourageKitten/pseuds/CourageKitten
Summary: (Title inspired by me putting a bunch of Splatoon related things into google translate and getting some weird messages out)After hearing the Calamari Inkantation during Agent 3's battle with DJ Octavio, an Octoling named Kira Yumatori realizes that she has some strange memories of being someone else, thousands of years ago. Eventually she finds herself in a deep underground subway, where she remotely meets someone she may or may not eventually fall in love with...Follows the story of Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion. Major spoilers for said expansion.My first time posting a story online at all, but do not be afraid to offer constructive criticism. That said, I will not appreciate comments criticizing this story solely because it is a self-insert romance. If you don't like it for that reason, don't call me "cringe", go read something else.





	1. Prologue

POI-4062: Professor R███ T██

 

May be attempting to use anomalous resources in the construction of artificial intelligence. It is unknown at this time whether the anomalies will be used in the programming of the AI or simply to prolong the longevity of the hardware. Professor T██ is not known to be affiliated with any major groups of interest at this time. Since he does not pose any significant threat at this time, surveillance will be maintained, but no direct action will be taken. 

 

 _Present Day_  


I finished typing my report and hit “Send to database”. Once I clicked it, I waited until I saw the usual “pending approval” notice before closing the program. 

I sat back and sighed. Why did I need to do research on this guy anyway? I was supposed to be specializing in memetics. It’d been two years, I’d finally turned 18, I should be out of “training” and doing my own thing by now. Granted, I had learned a lot since they took me in after the incident... but I still wished that they would let me do more things that I wanted to do. I guess they looked down on me because I was young. I didn’t blame them. I’d interacted with people my age.

I was about to open Skyrim; that had been my last bit of work, and my wife Mjoll and I had some adventuring to do. Until the alarm went off. 

“All personnel, proceed to your evacuation shelters immediately. Repeat, all personnel, proceed to your evacuation shelters immediately.”

 

I quickly gathered my stuff and started to hurriedly make my way to the evacuation shelter. Too hurriedly, though. Like a horror movie cliché, I tripped and fell down on absolutely nothing. I managed to get up, but then found myself pinned to the wall by an alien-looking entity.

I knew what it was. It was the most high-risk entity we contained at our site. It had shown signs of higher-dimensional travels, but no signs of hostility.

Until now.

 

It looked piercingly into my eyes, its head at a strange angle. “There are plans for you.” It said in the most creepily calm and stoic voice, and then everything went black.

 

_12,000 years later_

 

My name was Kira Yumatori.

  
Was.

I grew up like any other Octoling: oppressed and militaristic. We were taught only what we might need to know on the battlefield or supporting those who would be.

Once or twice I thought about asking “Why?” But those thoughts were quickly pushed down by the brainwashing and the hypnotic music that supplemented it.

I wished I knew more about the music. I felt like I should. I always felt... different like that. Like there was another part of me that knew more things than I should.

Those thoughts were quickly pushed back down, too.

Until that day.

Our leader, DJ Octavio, was going to be battling an inkling who had been terrorizing us and stealing our power sources. The squid was there to try and take our ultimate power source, the Great Zapfish, back for itself. 

We all watched the battle eagerly, hoping for its defeat.

Until we heard that song.

Something clicked into place.

Honestly, my first thought was just “It sounds pentatonic”. An inconsequential thought.

But I didn’t know what pentatonic meant.

Until I did. I knew everything. Or, it felt like everything.

I clutched my head. I could barely stop myself from screaming right there and then. I was flooded with memories, with knowledge, of inconsequentiality and of importance.

They must have missed me, curled up on the ground, desperately trying to figure out what was going on.

When I finally was able to get up, everyone was gone. The inklings, the zapfish, the other Octarians, everyone.

And I was finally able to ask myself, “Why do we deserve all the resources? Why shouldn’t they be spread equally?”

I was... free.

I met others who had been freed by the song called Calamari Inkantation. They too were questioning everything that they had had drilled into them since they were able to understand.

But none of them were like me. None of them had these thousands of memories to sift through, figuring out what happened.

I began trying to write down everything I remembered.

My name was Caroline Gentara. I was a junior researcher for the SCP Foundation. I had been killed or transferred or something by an entity that had breached containment.

I was... human. But not anymore.

We had learned some about humans, mostly because their structures and remains still existed alongside us. But we had been taught little other than they were destroyed long ago.

But I had been one. A very long time ago.

 

Then who was I, really? My body was still Octarian. I still remembered growing up, overpowered by the memetic music. 

Yet now I knew it was memetic.

I spent two years trying to sort it out.

First, I started writing down every little fact I could remember. I had hated reading books by Charles Dickens in high school. The lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. Even as much of the Bee Movie script I could remember. But I just couldn’t catalogue everything. And... it wasn’t helping my identity to write this all down. I still was confused to who I was. I didn’t know if I was Caroline Gentara, or Kira Yumatori. 

For two years I searched for anything. Some kind of reason for all of this. Maybe a way out, a way to get back to the old Foundation site. I knew where it was. Maybe some data had survived. 

But on the day I was finally close to getting out... something happened.

I was walking towards my destination, checking my map occasionally, when suddenly I was attacked. Two inklings, an older one and one who looked about my age, seemed to have mistaken me for hostile. I tried to tell them I wasn’t going to hurt them but before I could finish I felt something ensnare me, a strange, different sensation, and then everything faded away.

I woke up slowly, feeling cold stone ground beneath me. When I opened my eyes, I saw the older inkling who had been fighting me standing over me. I quickly shrieked and jumped back, pressing myself against a wall.

I guess he realized that I wasn’t a threat to him, and because we both agreed that we had no idea where the hell we were, we decided to work together to find a way out. 

He introduced himself as Captain Cuttlefish, and then we got moving.

The area seemed to be some kind of subway. The only trains we saw were non-functioning, but there were train tracks everywhere.

 

Maybe we could take the train out.

After clearing the way a little bit, we found what looked to be a station, but there was still no train. There was, however, a telephone. It looked to be from the early 20th century of humanity, said my old memories.

 

It started ringing.

 

There was nothing to do but answer it.

 

_(Edit: It has come to my attention that Yumatori is the name of a Yu-gi-oh ship. My character's last name is not a reference to that.)_


	2. Introductions Part 1

I picked up the receiver bit and put it to my ear, but that wasn’t necessary, as as soon as I did so, it immediately started blaring recorded dialogue so loud that they could probably hear it up on the surface, wherever that was. 

 

Then it started talking in the style of a corporation trying to make a meme page. You know, “How do you do, fellow kids?” type stuff. It spouted slang that probably hadn’t been used since that Captain Cuttlefish behind me was a fucking child, with the occasional error message in place of some useful word, which made me feel like I was reading Foundation documents back when I still had only level 1 clearance, where I would look at the page and practically scream “’Redacted’? ‘Redacted’ what?!”. 

 

From the little sense I could make out of this cesspool of bad attempts to relate to the “younger generation”, it was trying to tell me that I was applicant 10,008 (which Cuttlefish decided to shorten to “Agent 8”) and if I wanted to go the “promised land” I needed to do... something or other. It gave me a card and some kind of communication device.

 

Maybe I could call the Enterprise to beam me up. If I were as cheeky as I used to be, I would have tried, but A) It wouldn’t work, and B) I didn’t want Cuttlefish getting suspicious of me. From what I could tell, I was already on pretty thin ice, being an Octarian and him being someone who fights them and all.

 

I knew there was definitely something fishy about this whole situation. I think it was the words “promised land”. Any time you hear those words outside of the Bible, something’s up. Sometimes even when you hear them in the Bible. God was a pretty sketchy guy. Sent a couple of bears to maul 42 children for calling a prophet bald.

 

But for now, it was my only hope.  _Our_  only hope. Even if Cuttlefish was kind of my enemy, I wouldn’t abandon another person.

 

Almost on cue, a train came through the tunnel and screeched to a halt at the station. The doors opened. I looked at Cuttlefish, shrugged, and we got on.

 

Once the doors closed and the train started moving, I heard a kind of shlicking sound. At first, I thought... maybe someone was mopping the floor or something? On a moving train? But when I looked, there was this... blue thing wearing a cap on the floor. Then it introduced itself.

 

It said its name was C.Q. Cumber and it was the conductor. In order to reach the “promised land” the phone had been talking about, I needed to do some test chambers (suspicious) and find four “thangs” (things? thongs? I don’t know) and then I could go there. Then it showed me the way to the first test.

  


It seemed that these tests were about completing some task in order to get to the goal. I quickly completed the first one given to me. When I did, I received some points. Apparently, those were used to pay entrance to the tests. If you failed, you had to pay again. I also got this thing called a “mem cake”. They called it... my memory compressed into physical form? Sounded... anomalous.

  


I got back to the train, intending to go straight to the next test chamber. However sketchy it sounded, this “promised land” was literally our only hope of finding a way out. But before I could activate the CQ-80 device, Cuttlefish got a signal on his walkie talkie. “Come in, Agent 3!” He said, before the radio crackles resolved themselves into a voice.

  


“MIC CHECK, ONE TWO, WHO THE  _HELL_  ARE YOU?!”

  


“Excuse me?!” Replied Cuttlefish, rightly so.

  


“Pearl! Didn’t anyone teach you to respect your elders?!” Said another voice.

  


I’ll always remember the first words I ever heard her say.

 

Cuttlefish obviously demanded to know where his “Agent 3” was, but Pearl sidestepped the question and introduced herself as Pearl, or as she claimed she wanted to be called, “MC Princess”.

 

Yeah... I just stuck with Pearl.

 

Then she started rapping, for God’s sake. I was just... shocked. I thought Cuttlefish, being someone who seemed respectable, would put a stop to it, but to my surprise, he also started rapping.

 

I needed to find a classification for the anomaly that was causing my palm and my face to be extremely, possibly magnetically or gravitationally, attracted to each other and unable to separate.

 

Finally the other girl put a stop to it... luckily.

 

She claimed that they found a radio and heard his transmission coming from it. They were on Mount Nantai, a place I had heard of. It was very near Octo Valley, where I had lived. Apparently we had been near there when Cuttlefish and Agent 3 had attacked me and... well, this happened.

 

I guess Cuttlefish had stopped seeing me as an enemy. He just called me Agent 8 like I was his old friend or something. I guess that inklings were okay, after all. Better than the Octarians, at least. Maybe better than humans.

 

The girl introduced herself as Marina (aka DJ Hyperfresh, according to her). So I finally had a name to put to that voice. Nice name. I felt like I’d heard it before.

 

Maybe it was the similarity to the name Namira. I had always kept cataloguing memories, going through “phases” of cataloguing different types of information. I had been going through a Skyrim phase before this happened, and had almost been finished with my list of Daedric princes.

 

That reminded me. I grabbed Cuttlefish’s walkie talkie. “Uhh, Nami- Marina, did you happen to find a... journal? Very large? Two years worth of material? Because that’s mine.”

 

I heard the distinct sound of a book shutting. “No.” Pearl said. “Yes.” Marina said, slightly exasperated.

 

“Alright, uh... could you just... keep it safe?”

 

“Sure.” She said. There was a bit of a pause, and I suspected some stuff was happening out of range of the mic. It was a few minutes before Marina came back.

 

“Anyways... I’ll get to work analyzing your surroundings, and hopefully I’ll be of some help to you!” She said.

 

“I don’t really get what’s going on, but hang tight. We got you!” Said Pearl. 

 

I didn’t know why, but with them watching over me, I felt... safer. More assured.


	3. Introductions Part 2

Pearl and Marina arrived back at their shared apartment that night. It was a nice place, the kind that they needed Pearl’s rich dad to be able to afford. But Pearl had always been happy to share her good fortune, even when she had barely known Marina.

 

Reopening the computer and checking the video feed of Agent 8, she appeared to be fast asleep on the ground of the subway station. Pearl wondered how she could be sleeping so soundly in such a place, but Marina knew... she must be used to it.

 

They closed the laptop back up and Pearl took out the journal they had found again. It was a large book, amateurly and somewhat shoddily bound. She opened it and started flipping through the pages, and a confused look came over her face.

 

“Pearl! What did I-“ Marina was about to make her shut the journal again, until she caught sight of what was in it. “This is...” She started flipping through it as well. “Incomprehensible...”

 

It was in the Octarian language, that she had expected. But the content was... strange, and very diverse. It felt like a book of everything. There was music theory, lyrics to songs Marina had never heard of, plots for almost every type of video game, movie, and TV show imaginable... had Agent 8 come up with all this herself in two years?

 

Pearl could only speak a little Octarian, learned for necessity when teaching Inklish to Marina. And she certainly couldn’t read it. So Marina translated for her. But it was hard work, especially when Marina couldn’t stop laughing over an extremely vulgar conversation between two people named Mario and Luigi.

 

Eventually Pearl got tired and went to bed. But Marina stayed up, looking through the large collection. It was... very strange. For one thing, almost everything tended to center around humans. Marina knew of them, an ancient species that had died out long ago. But almost everything in the journal mentioned them as the main characters, and mentions of Inklings and even Octarians were incredibly sparse. Even when non-humans were mentioned, they tended to be fictional fantasy or sci-fi species that were based on them, like Vulcans, described as “humans with pointy ears, green blood, and mind melding powers” at one point. For one thing, how did she know the exact shape of a human’s ears? Maybe they had been pointy like Inklings’ instead of rounded like Octolings’. For another thing, how did she know they had red blood and didn’t have telepathic mind melding powers? Well, the last part could be assumed, but how did she know for sure?

 

For another thing, Agent 8 tended to credit people with the work. But none of these people seemed to exist. They had strange names; most of them didn’t sound like any Octarian or even Inkling name Marina had heard. No matter how far she dug, there was no record of people with those exact names. Had she made them up too, as a sort of universe building exercise...? It was all kind of suspicious.

 

Planning to stop soon, Marina turned one more page and her eyes fell upon a page of hand-drawn sheet music for a song called “Corridors of Time”. As she looked it over, something struck her. She could hear the notes in her head as she read it, and she liked it. She opened the computer back up and connected her headphones, intending to use a sample of the melody in a song of her own she had been working on. She noticed the video feed of Agent 8 was still going, but she hadn’t moved. Still asleep, it looked like.

 

 _What is going on inside your head?_ Marina briefly wondered, looking at her image, before she minimized the feed and began to work on her song.


	4. Acclimations Part 1

I remember, in my past life, when I was younger and obsessed with Portal 2. It was when I was 12 or 13, and I was just beginning that transition from childhood to adolescence. I would have done anything to be in the game and interact with the characters, even though it would have threatened my life to do so. Eventually, of course, I moved on to a different phase and forgot about Portal 2.

 

Over the first few days doing the tests for Kamabo Corporation, I wondered if I was in some marginal way finally getting my wish.

 

The tests weren’t hard. Well, okay - they were hard. I would be lying if I said I didn’t fail them many times. But they weren’t  _complicated_. The tasks were easy enough to understand, but sometimes they were a bit... hard to execute.

 

I had been prepared for a lot of similar things as part of the Octarian combat training, but sometimes I had to take those concepts and use them in... interesting ways. Whoever had designed these tests had tried to make sure that whoever passed them had to be not only quick and tough, but also versatile and creative.

 

I found myself wielding weapons I had never heard of before, much less seen. Finding out how they worked was something that needed to be learned on the fly.

 

Luckily, Pearl and Marina were always on the line to help me. And... Cuttlefish too, I guess. Not that he didn’t help. He did. He had been working on fighting us, the Octarians, for decades, and even trained Agent 3 to do so as well.

 

I wondered if I ever met Agent 3 how it would all go. Cuttlefish said that she was young, maybe even younger than me, so she probably had enough of an open mind to at least tolerate me.

 

Pearl, Marina, and Cuttlefish gave me lots of good advice on how to go about doing the tests. Strategic tests, tips on how operate the weapons, and even just encouraging words help me through it.

 

But that wasn’t all.

 

One time, after failing a particular test a few too many times, Marina informed me that if I gathered enough data from attempting and re-attempting the tests, she could hack the corporation’s systems and make them think that I had passed the test. 

 

I thought that was really cool. I made sure she knew that I thought it was really cool.

 

My respect for her grew immensely.

 

Pearl wasn’t useless, either. If I ever ran out of the CQ points used to pay for the tests (which I did... like, once) she could send me some using her dad’s money. I did have to pay it back, though... I mean, really, what did I expect? It was probably a lot of money. 

 

Cuttlefish, um... occasionally did some rapping or something. It was weird.

 

Sometimes I talked to Pearl and Marina a bit, when I was taking a break or in transit to a different test chamber. I liked getting to know them. Pearl was... unique, but she still came across as a nice person, even cute at times. She sounded like a chibi, if that made any sense. Marina, though... I was really coming to admire her. I could tell she was an Octoling like me; I knew by the accent. But she was speaking the Inkling language quite fluently for someone who had only had at most two years. I knew it because I had been in programs since I was really young. I had inherited a knack for languages from my previous life, I guess... and they had decided that was going to be my specialty. But it had still taken years. There were still some things I didn’t know how to say simply because you don’t get taught those kinds of things in a language program intended for at most, espionage.

 

Marina seemed to be basically a genius. The language, and the hacking thing, and just the air she gave off when I talked to her. Not like a haughty, “look how smart I am” air that most “geniuses” give off, but just the way she analyzed things and took care of problems. And the way she acted like she knew she didn’t know everything.

 

Gradually, she also sent along logs from a chat room that she, Pearl, and Cuttlefish were talking in as well. I was starting to learn what kind of people they were, even just from the few lines that I could read.

 

Marina and I also seemed to share something in common. In the second chat log she sent, she talked about how she had analyzed my surroundings and found a lot of strange readings, like I was in a different dimension or something. I wondered if she desired to analyze and understand anomalies like I once did. Like I still wanted to do. Once I got out of here. It didn’t matter if the SCP Foundation was gone, I’d restart it. Or something. Didn’t know how that would go exactly.

 

There were vending machines where I could put in the points and get food out. Well, it  _looked_  kind of like food. It was really mostly tasteless, but it was... edible. 

 

I always slept at the central station. I couldn’t sleep on the moving train. And the flat ground was so much more satisfying than a train bench. I had developed a preference for flat stone ground to sleep on over the time I had spent free, trying to get out and figure myself out.

 

I didn’t like sleeping in front of the phone. I guess it was just a mix of personification and pareidolia, but seeing it “staring” at me just made me... uneasy. So I slept far behind it.

 

That morning, when I woke up, I knew it was finally time to get my first “thang”. When I got on the train, it was shown as the next place on the map. I selected the station where it rested and sat down to wait.

 

I sighed. “I’m nervous,” I confessed, speaking into my CQ-80. 

 

“Huh? Why?” Replied Pearl.

 

“Well, I... you think there’s gonna be some kind of ultimate challenge there? Like a boss fight in a video game? Because, like... is it just gonna be sitting there?”

 

“Well... whatever it is, you can do it.” Said Marina.

 

“I’ve done enough. I just... I hope it’s not too hard.”

 

It was only a few more seconds before the train arrived at the station. I took a breath and got off.

 

I stepped into an empty-looking chamber. An equipper gave me a basic weapon and that was it. I cautiously walked forward, hearing my steps echo in the room and the hallway in front of me. The floor in the hallway sloped upward so I couldn’t see what was at the other end. There was only a faint light, like the light emitted by the goals at the end of the test chambers. 

 

“Is anyone... here?” I said. I think I meant to call it out, but then I realized that’s what victims in horror movies do, and ended up saying it quietly, almost to myself.

 

“Doesn’t look like it...” Pearl said.

 

“Keep your wits about you, just in case.” Said Marina.

 

 _Alright. I’ll do it for you, Marina._  I thought.

 

...Why did I just think that?

 

But I couldn’t stop to think about that thought. I walked through the hallway, checking my surroundings as I did so, and it opened up into a clearing. It was a platform that overlooked a large, open area. It mostly was empty space, but in the distance, past a large, insurmountable chasm, there was what looked like a trainyard of some sort. I wondered if those trains were part of another operation, or being used at all.

 

In front of me, an object floated suspended within a sphere of energy. I guessed that was the thang. I knew how those spheres worked; they were Octarian technology. I began shooting the sphere, watching it get more and more dyed with the color of my ink until finally it shattered and the thang floated to the ground.

 

It was large, and I had to use a nearby pallet jack to take it back to the train, where we strapped it to the top and began our return to the central station.

 

“...That was too easy.” I remarked, my faint apprehension having failed to dissipate. “There should have been some resistance.”

 

“Maybe it's just a reward.” Said Pearl.

 

“I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right. I had a... previous line of work that’s telling me so.”

 

We all were quiet until we finally arrived back at the station. After unsecuring the thang and finally delivering it to the platform, the stupid phone released some more slang-filled word vomit about how I only had three to go, Cuttlefish said some stuff I don’t exactly remember either, and I was off to continue. 

 

When this all was over, I would be so relieved.


	5. Acclimations Part 2

Marina found Agent 8 to be very intriguing.

 

Besides the mysteries of her notebook (which despite more research and digging were no closer to making sense), it was just... the way she behaved.

 

She was eccentric, really like a living manifestation of that journal. Not like a person being random on purpose for the sake of being random, no. Like someone whose mind was working on several different wavelengths at once, switching between them often and somewhat unpredictably.

 

Sometimes she would be focused and serious, strategizing and hardly responding to any input. Sometimes she would be open and talkative, often making jokes that Pearl and Marina wouldn’t understand, or maybe they would understand it to be a reference to something in the journal. And sometimes she could be wistful, almost sadly nostalgic for something intangible. 

 

Marina wondered what it was.

 

She also moved uniquely. Off the battlefield, she moved normally, walking with no specific confidence or flavor. She even seemed a bit underconfident at times. But on the battlefield, during tests, she moved almost elegantly. She ran, dodged, aimed, all in a strangely graceful way.

 

The best part was the way she transformed.

 

When she dove into her ink, she seemed to remain in Octoling form until the last possible second, giving the impression of someone diving into a pool of water. Marina supposed it transferred extra momentum, letting her swim faster at the start then she could by transforming into an octopus earlier. But it looked amazing. 

 

The best were tests where she had to jump from up high at some point into a line of ink at the bottom.

 

Marina wanted to say something, but somehow it felt... intrusive.

 

She was progressing fast through the tests too. Already she had gotten two of the “thangs” that the phone and C.Q. Cumber had said were required to go to the “promised land”.

 

The second one had been the same as the first: unguarded, in an empty room at the end of a tunnel. It was unnerving to all of them that objects supposedly so important wouldn’t have any security around them besides an energy shield that, while taking longer to shatter than most, offered no protection to a person with an attention span greater than that of a goldfish.

 

Marina could tell that the thangs were supposed to assemble into something. She just couldn’t tell what.

 

Marina enjoyed talking with Agent 8. Whenever 8 wasn’t in the middle of a test or asleep, that was what she spent most of the time doing. Talking with Marina and Pearl. They became friends quickly, although 8 wondered to them whether she had much of a choice. She called them her “companion cubes”. Whether this was a compliment or not had yet to be determined. But she seemed to like them, and until there were any signs otherwise, Marina decided that was enough for her.

 

The only thing that was odd to Marina was her reaction to the photos of her. Marina had sent a chat log where Pearl had posted two pictures of her, one from when they had met and one from a month or two ago. When she saw them, 8 seemed to... stare at them. Not in a creepy way, just... interestingly.

 

Maybe she recognized her. Marina didn’t remember knowing anyone who looked like her, or with the same name as her (Kira, she’d mentioned it once or twice) from when she... before she’d come to the surface, but she could’ve been just a passing acquaintance, or maybe someone who had noticed her without Marina noticing. Besides, a lot of her memories from that time just kind of blended together. She guessed they just did that when you were under someone else’s control. 

 

Or maybe she just thought Marina was attractive? 

 

Marina didn’t think she’d be the kind of person that 8 would be into, but it wasn’t out of the question.

 

Marina continued to read through 8’s journal. She kept noticing references to a strange organization called the SCP Foundation, which seemed to be a scientific organization of some sort. But a strange one. It apparently existed to research and document anomalies of some sort.

 

It almost kept Marina up at night. Wondering if all of this was some kind of brilliantly constructed fictional world that Agent 8 came up with and connected together all by herself, or if it was real, and with it all the dangers that it described.

 

One night after talking to 8, Marina said she was signing off. She disconnected her headphones and went to prepare herself for bed. On the way to her room, she realized she had forgotten to shut the computer off. When she went back to turn it off, she noticed that Agent 8 was sitting there, lips moving. In curiosity, Marina turned the audio back on. She was singing a song Marina didn’t recognize, not even from the journal. It was hauntingly beautiful, with 8’s voice being not trained with the rich tones of a professional singer, but still perfectly in tune. When she did get a note wrong, she corrected it with a natural slide in pitch that sounded so natural that had Marina not known the ways of voice, she wouldn’t have noticed.

 

When the song was over, 8 laid down and went to sleep like nothing was any different.

 

Marina watched for a few minutes, hoping maybe she could sing another song, before she gave up. She shut off the computer and walked back to her room.

 

Laying in bed waiting for sleep to catch up with her, Marina made herself a promise. When Agent 8 got to the surface, she would ask her about everything. The stuff in the journal, the way she moved and sang, everything.


	6. Realizations part 1

Getting used to this life didn’t really help much.

I mean, sure, it got to be more like a routine, which helped a little. Wake up, eat, go to some tests, eat, go to some more tests, eat, sleep. I like routines.

But I kept feeling uneasy about something. I couldn’t tell what it was, it was just... near-constant. Kind of a feeling of impending doom. Maybe I had mild anxiety or something? I didn’t know if that was how it worked or not.

Maybe it was the fact that I was almost done here. I had recently gotten the third thang, and it too had been in an empty tunnel protected only by an energy shield.

This meant that there were two options for the fourth one: either it was the same, or this was all a trap designed to give us expectations and then launch a surprise attack once we let our guard down by the last one.

Tell me: if you really wanted to test someone, which option would you choose?

But that wasn’t the only thing. I could feel my social anxiety coming back for some reason. I couldn’t talk to Pearl and Marina without feeling like I was saying something wrong and not knowing it. But I didn’t know why. I had been able to talk to them before without feeling this way for a while.

Maybe as I became better friends with them, it would get better. Like, this was the difficulty spike to determine whether I really wanted to.

Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that I remembered Marina.

One day, in the chat room, Cuttlefish had posted a thing he found about Marina’s life back before she had left for the surface. And I knew why she seemed familiar to me.

It was a really hazy memory, like almost all of mine, but I remember one day, completely by accident, walking into somewhere I shouldn’t have. I saw a person who I now know was her, sitting with a team of other Octarians, but I only remember her. I quickly realized that I was not supposed to be there and shut the door before I could be noticed, but it stuck with me. It made me feel something I didn’t recognize. I knew all the emotions they let me feel, but I didn’t know this one.

The next day, I had already forgotten all about it. Hypnosis is a powerful thing.

Now that I was aware, I thought I’d be able to recognize it. But it still confused me. All I could call it was... questioning. But I didn’t know what I was supposed to be questioning.

I still talked to them, though. I liked them too much to stop. And during the tests, their help was still invaluable. Especially because when I was trying to get to the third thang, I had to get through a few particularly hard tests. I supposed it was the route I had chosen, but it was the most efficient route, and I wasn’t going to let some test beat me and my ways of planning.

Pearl and Marina knew how apprehensive I was about how the thangs were basically unprotected whatsoever. So the day I got the third one, when I got back onto the train, I found that Marina had sent a new chat log for me to look at.

But this one was different.

Pearl mentioned the first song Marina had shown her, and Marina said that she still had it. She posted it in the chat, and there was a button I could press to play it.

When I listened to the song, I realized it made me feel... strange. The same feeling I remember feeling the day I unknowingly first saw her. My mind seemed to focus on her voice, the way she sang beautifully.

Up until then, I had wondered why she had chosen to be a music artist with Pearl instead of an engineer or some kind of software developer if she was so intelligent, talented, and capable on that front. But now I knew. Her voice, the way she sang so richly and beautifully... it made my heart beat quickly, like it was beating to her voice, to the beat of her song.

But it wasn’t just her voice, I realized. It was everything about her, her beauty, her intelligence, her sweet personality, the way that from her first words to me she had been on my side.

Suddenly I recognized the questioning feeling.

I was falling in love with Marina. That first bit of the feeling I had felt years ago had only been simple attraction, but now it was something more. Now I knew I wanted to be by her side for as long as I could, to repay her for everything she’s done for me, to make her realize how incredibly exceptional she really was.

But I didn’t know if I ever could.


	7. Realizations Part 2

| 

### SCP-4237 <supercatprincess4237@gmail.com>  
  
---  
  
Fri, Oct 19, 7:39 PM (20 hours ago)

|   |   
  
| 

to me  
  
---  
  
 

 

 

Ever since Marina saw that Captain Cuttlefish had had a file on her life back with the Octarians, she had wondered something.

 

The day he had posted the file in the chatroom, she had at first been worried that Pearl would be angry at her for lying about her past, or worse, scared of her for just being an Octoling. But Pearl, although a little rough around the edges, was still a good person. Despite being privileged and still a little spoiled, she accepted Marina for who she was. 

 

When that was resolved, Marina began to think. Maybe there was a similar file for Agent 8. Something that would explain how she was either some sort of literary and musical genius or... something else. Something bigger.

 

The first thing she did was find out her last name. She tried to work it into a conversation of theirs without being obvious, and it worked. Yumatori. Kira Yumatori.

 

Then she created a private chat room, something that no one would stumble into by accident when they put a wrong letter in the url. She invited Cuttlefish, and once he was settled in after his usual technological troubles, she asked him if he had a file on her. He said he thought he remembered the name from around 10 years before, and he’d get back to her.

 

If it was 10 years ago, then she would have been... what, 6 or 7? Marina had barely begun school at that age. That was, of course, when they discovered her aptitude for engineering. But even though she only took three years to graduate, it was still three years. To have a full report written up at her age...

 

So she waited until Cuttlefish finally said he found it. Upon looking at it, it wasn’t just an overview like hers had been, there was a full incident report, and an interview. What had been so important about her that they did that?

 

Marina opened the report and began reading.

* * *

**Subject #:** 4237

 

**Name:** Kira Yumatori 

 

**Age:** 6

 

**Incident report:** Subject used her own ink to paint a lethal visual hazard and presented it during a visit to a secure area, killing 9 elite Octolings and nearly reaching DJ Octavio. Subject was apprehended and the image was confiscated and destroyed. Subject was interviewed to ascertain motive.

 

***Begin interview***

 

**Interviewer:** Why did you kill those soldiers?

 

**Subject:** Why did you kill those farmers, 682? *laughs*

 

**I:** I don’t follow.

 

**S:** It’s one of the things I remember. You reminded me of it.

 

**I:** What do you mean, the things you remember?

 

**S:** I remember a lot of things. Like my old name, and that pattern, and... *singing* I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was...

 

**I:** Your old name?

 

**S:** It used to be Caroline. But now it’s not.

 

**I:** Why did you kill those octolings?

 

**S:** Because I wanted to stop listening to the voices.

 

**I:** Voices? In your head?

 

**S:** No, the ones in the music. They tell me that I should stay here and keep listening and one day we’ll take back what’s ours. And I listened for a while because it was... fun, like a game. But I don’t wanna listen anymore. I wanna go to the surface and find my old stuff. 

 

**I:** Okay, this-

 

**S:** You can’t stay in power forever, you know. Everything changes.

 

***End interview***

 

**Conclusions:** Subject was determined to be immune to hypnosis. Testing revealed the immunity to be directly linked to the subject’s reported “memories”. A directly influential technique was developed to suppress the memories, at the cost of some of the subject’s ability to form new long-term memories.

* * *

Marina just stared at the end of the report, bewildered. It answered some questions, but it only raised more. Where were the memories coming from? Why did she have them? What was a lethal visual hazard?

 

One thing intrigued Marina, almost more than it should have. Her “old name”, she had said. Caroline. It was a strange name, like the ones she wrote into her scripts and stories and overviews in her journal. Not typical for an Inkling or an Octoling.

 

She said it out loud a few times, whispering the exotic sounds with a kind of excitement.

 

Marina knew she would see Agent 8 in person soon. The last thang was shown on the map beyond only one more test. Unless it was the hardest test in existence, she would get it the next day.

 

Marina couldn’t wait.


	8. Unlocking Part 1

I woke up with the definition of mixed feelings. No - not just mixed. Blended. That was more like it. Thrown in a food processor on an episode of “Will it Blend?” until I couldn’t tell what it was anymore.

 

Today was the last day, as far as I knew. There was only one more test between me and the final thang. Then I would be out of here, free to do whatever I wanted on the surface.

 

Whatever I wanted? But I wanted to see Marina, and I couldn’t keep my feelings hidden for long, and we had just met a little more than a week ago, and... god, was it really that little of a time span? I felt like I had been here forever. 

 

And Marina would never accept my feelings from just knowing me for such a short time.

 

And this was all assuming that the last test and the fourth thang didn’t hold some kind of incredibly lethal trap.

 

And what was I doing, the last vestige of humanity, worrying about Marina? I needed to find the old Foundation sites. For everyone’s safety. And I needed to re-found it. And was I really cut out to be a leader for something like that? I worry too much about little details to be an effective planner.

 

And who cared, we’d get the last thang and get to the surface and see from there. 

 

I got up and stared at the CQ-80 for a few seconds. I had been learning to get over the little rush of fear I had before I picked it up every morning. I needed Pearl and Marina’s help more than I was afraid of showing my feelings. For now, it didn’t matter.

 

“You guys awake?” I asked, my usual greeting.

 

“Yeah,” said Marina’s voice, surprisingly. “Pearl’s still asleep, I’ll get her.”

 

Usually Marina slept later than Pearl did. I guess today was different. Maybe she was as anxious about the day as I was. Or maybe Pearl had been super tired or something, I don’t know. When she got on, she sounded kind of disgruntled, so I’d go with that.

 

So I got on the last test. It wasn’t exactly hard, it was just kind of complicated. It took me a few hours and a few hundred credits to fully figure it out. But eventually I did it, and got my last credit reward and my last mem cake. Then the way was open to the final thang.

 

Up until then, I had somewhat forgotten about my apprehension. The focus and frustration of the test had pushed it out of my mind. But now it was back, and as the train stopped at the station, I took a deep breath and prepared for the worst.

 

There was nothing. No final trial, no ambush, nothing except the same empty hallway and barrier around the final thang. Even after I took it and loaded it onto the train, nothing popped out to kill me. 

 

So we set course for the central station, not letting our guard down just yet.

 

But when I got out and unloaded the thang, nothing was waiting there either. Nothing except the telephone, ringing like we were in a terrible game about animatronics that people make furry porn of for some reason.

 

So I picked up the receiver, this time holding it far away from me before it started shouting at me. It congratulated me in its usual incomprehensible slew of outdated slang, and then it asked me if I was ready to go to the promised land.

 

When I said yes, it asked again.

 

And then another time.

 

I suddenly felt like I was living one of my games of Dungeons and Dragons, making a questionable decision and hearing the DM ask me if I was _really sure_ if I wanted to do that. Of course, in those games, usually as soon as I heard those words, I reconsidered my decision and didn’t have to hear about how my bard who I had painstakingly leveled up over several sessions died horribly in some cheap trap.

 

But now, what choice did I have? Stay down in the Deepsea Metro forever, looking for another way out that may or may not be there? I had to take my chances.

 

So I said yes for the final time.

 

Was it a mistake? I... don’t know.

 

The telephone spouted some more seemingly congratulatory bullshit and then it assembled the four thangs into a structure while making some very unnerving noises. It sounded like screaming.

 

I vaguely wondered if it was the screams of the other 10,007 subjects who had come before me, doomed to die or waste away down here.

 

But then it was done, and the structure was complete.

 

I didn’t even stop to look at it. I just wanted out.

 

Maybe I should have. I definitely should have.

 

Because it wasn’t until I was inside that we realized what it was. Marina had to call it out to us. I remember her words so clearly, the way you do when you associate them with a shock. As clearly as “I gently open the door” or “It was buried through your wife’s heart”. Even clearer, really, because it was real this time.

 

“Wait a second! Is it just me, or uh... does that look exactly like a blender?!”

 

And it was. 

 

It didn’t exactly register at first. The severity of the situation. Until I pressed my hands up against the clear glass, pressed _hard_ , and saw there was really no way out.

 

That was when my mind started to speed up. Not in any kind of supernatural way - I didn’t suddenly get the superpowers to break the glass or anything. In reflection. It was just like my brain was trying to allow me as many last thoughts as possible, give me time to wrap up all of my stray threads of thought before they were cut.

 

I could hear the beginnings of a large motor starting as the telephone stated that it was “reformatting matter”. Was this it? My end? And presumably... the end of what was left of humanity, its remnants in my mind?

 

Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe the anomaly that had made me as I was now was just that - an anomaly. A mistake. And now this anomaly was righting itself. Only with one unintended victim, Captain Cuttlefish. Well, two. Kira Yumatori shouldn’t have been dragged into this, should she?

 

Two casualties. Not the worst report I’d come across.

 

“Marina! You gotta do something!” I heard Pearl say.

 

Marina.

 

I’d never see her, would I?

 

“None of my hacks are working... I can’t get in!” She said.

 

Would her voice be the last one I ever heard?

 

I wanted it to be.

 

I didn’t even hear the next thing she said. I was just focusing on the way she said it. Her voice, her inflections, the way that even in panic she could make any word sound beautiful.

 

I closed my eyes and slid down to the floor.

 

There was only one more thing I needed to do. 

 

I couldn’t die without letting her know how I felt.

 

The first time I opened my mouth, the words didn’t want to come out. It was weirdly funny, in a way - even when I was about to die, I still was too afraid to tell her.

 

“I...” I screwed my eyes shut, trying not to let a sob get in the way of my confession. “I love you, Marina!”

 

I could’ve sworn I heard her gasp at the other end.

 

But now I was ready.

 

I heard a loud crashing sound, and everything cut out.

 

I slowly regained consciousness, feeling the cold stone ground beneath me. Looking around, I saw the familiar sight of the central station.

 

_Was it all a dream?_ I wondered.

 

Until I looked behind me, and saw Cuttlefish, the remains of the now-destroyed blender, and an Inkling I recognized.

 

As Cuttlefish verbally confirmed, it was Agent 3. She’d saved us, but she was unconscious now.

 

“I’m still alive?” I said.

 

Oh no.

 

Marina. I hadn’t meant to tell her before it was time. What would she say? Would she... feel different about me at all?

 

I could hear a silence hanging over the CQ-80. Neither Pearl nor Marina spoke. I think none of us knew what to say.

 

Luckily, except Cuttlefish.

 

“Hey! What’s that?” He shouted, and pointed at the ground. That broke the silence. We stopped worrying about feelings, and started worrying about getting out again.

 

“I... I think that might be an employee-model CQ-80.” Said Marina tentatively. “Give me a second here... I’ll see if I can access it.”

 

We waited for a few seconds, before we heard her excitedly exclaim “Jackpot!” and declare she’d accessed the blueprints for the entire facility. She sounded now like she’d entirely forgotten about what just happened, reabsorbed into her work. So I needed to forget about it too, because that was the only way I’d ever get out of here.

 

She started giving directions, telling me to go through the hole in the ceiling that Agent 3 had made. Cuttlefish decided to stay there and wait until Agent 3 woke up, meaning it would just be me alone.

 

But I had to go. So I changed forms, wound up, and super-jumped through the hole to god knows what.


	9. Unlocking Part 2

In the middle of the night, Marina woke up. She would have just gone back to sleep, had she not felt an overwhelming need to check if Agent 8 was okay. 

 

The rest of the day after the... incident, Agent 8 had been making her way up the parts of the facility that Marina had accessed from the CQ-80 that Agent 3 had been carrying. She’d made it about halfway before she got too tired to go on and decided to rest before continuing. Almost immediately after deeming a spot to be safe, she had passed out on the floor, leaving Pearl and Marina alone in their apartment. Since it was late for them too, they had also gone to bed. But Marina hadn’t been able to sleep very well. It was restless, lasting for only little bits at a time, until this time she woke up and couldn’t take it anymore.

 

She walked over to her computer and opened it back up. There was 8, also awake. She wasn’t doing anything; she looked like she was just thinking, saying a few things to herself that Marina couldn’t hear.

 

Marina was ready to call her, ask her what was wrong, but something in her told her that she shouldn’t. Not that it would be bad, but just that 8 would be better left to herself. 

 

So she stayed watching, making sure she was alright. 8 was probably anxious about everything too, and Marina wanted to be there to reassure her.

 

Suddenly, Marina heard Pearl’s voice right behind her. 

 

“What are you doing?” Said Pearl bewilderedly.

 

Marina jumped and turned around, startled. “I was just... checking on Agent 8.”

 

“ _Checking_ on her.” Pearl said in a tone that suggested Marina was really there for another reason. She couldn’t respond to that, as she realized she didn’t know whether she was there for that reason or not.

 

Pearl had known Marina for two years, enough to infer what the conflicted look on her face meant.

 

“You heard what she said, right?” Said Pearl, referring to Agent 8’s... impromptu confession. She knew the answer, of course. She’d seen Marina’s reaction firsthand. Marina, who might not be the most organized person but still was hard to catch off guard, for once had looked completely shocked. It was something Pearl had never seen to that degree in her, and she didn’t know if she’d ever even expected it could happen.

 

And now Pearl could see that even after she had acted normal again earlier, the shock hadn’t completely worn off.

 

“Yeah...” Marina said, resting her palms on the desk the computer sat on.

 

“And?”

 

“I... I don’t know...” She closed the computer; looking at 8 was somehow making the confusing mix of feelings within her worse. She didn’t want these emotions, not while she had other things to focus on. Like actually getting 8 out of there alive. Where she was, there were no more respawn devices. If she fell or got splatted, she was dead. That was it.

 

Marina also didn’t want to think about that. It made the feelings worse too. Everything seemed to, at this point. She just had to focus herself, or she would never have a choice to make on the matter.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” She said, putting the computer aside. “I need to get back to bed.” But she didn’t really want to. She knew that if she did, it would just be more restless tossing and turning, and she’d never actually get the sleep she needed.

 

“Want some tea first?” Pearl offered. 

 

Marina sighed. “Sure.” She said, and smiled.

 

So Pearl got out the tea and filled the electric kettle with water. Once it was hot, she made the tea, pouring a cup for Marina and then for herself. For as long as the tea lasted, they sat on their couch and talked, not about Agent 8 or her feelings, but about seemingly everything except that, the way they used to. And Marina realized that no matter how this turned out, Pearl would always be there to support her. And no matter how this turned out, she was glad to have her as a friend.


	10. Liberations Part 1

I woke up that morning ready to finally escape once and for all.

 

Until, that is, I remembered the circumstances surrounding the events of yesterday.

 

I was now more afraid than ever to pick up the CQ-80. It was hard enough when all I was afraid of was Marina somehow finding out how I felt. But now I had told her, and still hadn’t received an answer of any kind. I also didn’t have time to receive an answer of any kind, given where I was and how dangerous it was. Unlike during the tests, I knew I could die for real here. I needed to pay as much attention as I could to my surroundings.

 

Therefore, I needed Pearl and Marina more than ever.

 

So I picked up the CQ-80. We all checked in as normal, as if nothing was wrong.

 

Until something was.

 

Cuttlefish did not answer on his side. At first, we figured it was because he was still asleep or something. I mean, he’s an old guy, they sleep a lot, right? So Marina tracked his location, making sure he was still at the central station.

 

As it turned out, he wasn’t.

 

He had climbed higher in the facility than I had, resting in what looked to be the final section. He was with Agent 3, which explained how he got there. But it still raised some questions. How did they get there without us noticing? From what we could tell, the only route accessible to us was the one that I was using. How could they have gotten past me without me noticing? And if they took a different route, how did they find it?

 

And why was he still not answering our calls?

 

“I guess the only way to find out is to keep going.” I said, before standing up, stretching, and continuing on.

 

I tried not to think about Marina. When I got nervous, I tended to lose focus and slip up. But it was hard when she was directly talking to me. Luckily, she seemed to be acting normal. It helped keep my mind off of everything. 

 

I kept getting that feeling again like I was in Portal 2, the section where you escape the test chambers and move into the background of the facility, making your way to either the midway “final battle” or the actual final battle.

 

The only problem was I didn’t know which one I was going towards.

 

Eventually, after acquiring the energy core to power the elevator to the surface, I stepped onto the elevator platform and watched as it began to rise up, taking me to my ultimate goal.

 

Everyone was silent during the ride. I guess we didn’t really know what to say. Or maybe we just didn’t need to say anything. 

 

The operation of the machinery produced a gentle minor chord.  When you learn to distinguish a minor chord, most music theory teachers will tell you to listen for a chord that sounds “sad”. But this one didn’t sound that way. It sounded more serene, like a resolution, a steady release of pressure, a denouement.

 

I began to think that maybe this whole situation would turn out fine after all.

 

Until the calm was interrupted when the elevator suddenly stopped. I looked around, trying to figure out the cause.

 

Then, Pearl pointed out a figure standing on a high platform.

 

It was Agent 3. But she looked different. Not really physically, not that I could tell from behind. The way she held herself. Every Inkling I had ever seen, including her two years ago, stood loosely, freely, always reflecting their archetypically Chaotic Good spirit. But Agent 3, right now, wasn’t. It was hard to explain. But I would describe it most like if someone wanted to make a default standing animation for a generic gun-wielding character model.

 

Something was controlling her. Not like the Octarian way, the memetic hypnosis mainly just made you think a different way. Whatever had Agent 3 was controlling her like a puppet, like it had hacked into her brain to turn it into a robot computer that it could program any way it wanted.

 

And when she turned around, I could see what it was. Or at least, the medium through which it was being done.

 

Clinging to her face, partially obscuring her right eye, was a glowing wad of bright green goo. It wasn’t ink, it was too viscous. It was something else, and I didn’t know what.

 

Then, we noticed Cuttlefish dangling upside down from a saucer-like platform. He screamed for help as Agent 3 looked down towards me. Then she dove off her platform to meet me. 

 

She unleashed her first attack, the Splashdown special. That one was my favorite; I always liked the way it felt to just slam down and have the area of effect take care of everything around me. And I guess that was why I wasn’t able to duck out of it in time. The impact of the ink shockwave broke my shield and suddenly I was awake.

 

This was _not_ practice. This was real. I could _not_ get splatted. If I did, I was dead and that was it. I had been aware of the fact earlier, but then I had usually had a few extra luxuries, like an extra shield or a corner to run behind. Now I was staring at another trained combatant who was completely ready to kill me.

 

So I retreated. There was a bit of cover not too far away, so I shot some ink onto the ground and ducked into it to recover. Agent 3-not-really would take enough time that I could recover, and I was protected from her other attacks. Once my shield was up again, I advanced, returning her fire.

 

Once I broke her shield, I was feeling confident.

 

She super-jumped away onto the floating platform Cuttlefish dangled from to recover, then returned, this time with another special, the Baller. This didn’t make sense; she shouldn’t have been able to have more than the first special. Marina said she must have had her limiter removed, which I knew was really hard to do, and completely against any rules. But what was I supposed to do, scream “HAX IM TELLING A MOD”? I just had to keep fighting.

 

I kind of realized the irony of the situation. I had been trained to fight Inklings like Agent 3 while hypnotized. In fact, I had been about to finish the elite program for Octoling soldiers. When I was freed, I thought I’d never use that training for its intended purpose. But here I was, doing just that.

 

I climbed atop the block I had been using as cover, pushing Agent 3 back with my fire as I waited out the timer on the Baller. I then dodged her upward fire and broke her shield once more. She super-jumped back to the platform, at first I assumed just to recover again, but then she stayed there, bringing out the Sting Ray special to attack from that range. 

 

I quickly realized what I had to do and I threw a bomb over to her platform, dodging what was left of the Sting Ray before it detonated. It broke her shield again, and I thought that would be it, like in a video game where the quintessential rule is “You hit a boss three times and it dies”. But she super-jumped back over to the elevator platform and used Splashdown again. I dodged it, but then she used it again. And again.

 

I realized that it was going to be pretty hard to dodge all of them for the short window she was open after a round of them. If I had had time to think it over, I would have decided not to risk it, but no one has time in battle.

 

So on her third Splashdown, I let her break my shield, and then aimed as best as I could and squeezed the trigger of the Octoshot, screwing my eyes shut.

 

My last shot that broke through her shield finally knocked the viscous goo free from her head and she fell backwards, unconscious. I ran forward, intending to make sure she was okay, and realized I had no idea where to take the pulse on an inkling, nor any idea whether the type of rescue procedures and CPR I knew for use on humans were the same either.

 

So I just looked and listened to see if she was breathing, and luckily she was.

 

I untied Cuttlefish, and the elevator started back up. It eventually stopped in front of a ladder. At the top, I could see sunlight shining through a hole.

 

Since Agent 3 was still unconscious, I put her over my shoulder, where her legs were hanging over my front. That way I wouldn’t bang her head on the ladder. Then I began climbing. She was heavy, and I had to take breaks a lot. I thought if my surroundings felt like Portal 2, maybe I could steal a few of the “fatty-fatty-no-parents” jokes too. I didn’t know whether Agent 3 had parents, though. And I couldn’t exactly ask her.

 

While I was climbing, it felt like it was lasting forever. But then I reached the top and hoisted Agent 3 through the hatch before climbing through myself. Then, all the fatigue and pain melted away.

 

There had been moments in the past two years where I had wondered if Kira Yumatori still existed, or if any of her that I had been had been erased when Caroline Gentara’s memories came into play. 

 

I didn’t doubt that she was still here anymore. That I was still her.

 

Because when I finally emerged above the ground, saw the ocean and smelled the air for the first time in... well, in my life, it was like Caroline never existed.

 

I froze for a second, taking it all in. The sky was dyed pink with the light of the setting sun, and I could see a city I knew to be Inkopolis in the distance. 

 

I ran past Agent 3 to the railing, my eyes wide, my hearts filled with excitement. I breathed in the salty air, welcoming the new scent. 

 

I listened to the waves lapping against the platform until, in the distance, I heard the sounds of an approaching helicopter.

 

Suddenly I was together again, integrated back into myself.

 

I knew Marina was on that helicopter. I... didn’t know how to feel. This would be my first time seeing her. And now that she knew how I felt about her, and we hadn’t had any time to talk about it, I... just didn’t know.

 

The helicopter reached our platform, and we climbed on. 

 

I watched the platform and the ocean fall away from us as the helicopter rose into the air. I stood on a higher platform with Pearl and Marina while Cuttlefish and Agent 3 stayed on a lower one. Then Pearl started doing a rap thingy with Cuttlefish, and they no longer paid attention to us, so I was basically alone with Marina.

 

God, I was really next to her. I could touch her if I wanted. And I did want to. But... I couldn’t. Not without knowing whether she wanted it too. 

 

“So, uh...” I began awkwardly. “About what I said... back down there...”

 

“Yeah...” She said. I vaguely noticed that we were both looking down at our hands.

 

“I... I meant it.” It was really all I could say. Even if I hadn’t meant to tell her this early, I wasn’t going to back down from what I said. I just had to hope she felt the same.

 

There was a bit of a pause before she finally responded. “I-“ she started to say, before she cut herself off in surprise as the platform Cuttlefish, Agent 3, and I had climbed up from began to rise from the sea. 

 

Marina and I both realized that we couldn’t worry about our feelings right then. She ran to stop the helicopter, and I picked up my Octoshot, not really knowing what else to do.

 

As we stopped moving, the structure continued to rise, revealing itself.

 

I recognized it. It was human. It looked like a Greco-Roman statue, but it was huge, the size of the Statue of Liberty or so. One of the statue’s eyes was missing, and in its place was an indentation, inside which was the telephone from back in the Deepsea Metro. But it was different. It looked a lot more deteriorated than it had been, and covering it was the same iridescent sludge that had been controlling Agent 3.

 

Suddenly, it spoke.

 

After disabling the “contemporary speech mode” that had caused me to not take it seriously earlier, it said that it was called Tartar, and it had been built by a professor long ago in order to pass on humanity’s greatest achievements. But now, it was disgusted by us - the Inklings and the Octarians. Because we had wars and were obsessed with fashion. It was prepared to destroy Inkopolis.

 

I felt like it was my fault. And I knew exactly why.

 

Everything I had hoped for... a life in Inkopolis with Marina, finding myself, bringing back humanity and the SCP Foundation, everything... it could all be gone. Because of me.

 

Then I had an idea.

 

“Pearl.” I demanded. “Give me your mic.”

 

“But-“

 

“Now!” I didn’t care about being harsh. I needed to make this right. 

 

She tossed it to me, and I held it up in front of me.

 

“Wait!” I yelled. I remembered the last report I ever wrote in my human life, the photos of his experiments with anomalous artificial intelligences, one of which had been a picture of a dismantled telephone with 914-like gears inside, and the pronounced similarities between his last name and the word Tartar, and I yelled the first thing that came to my mind with these memories. “I knew your creator!”

 

I heard the sound of its weapon powering down. I guess it decided to humor me.

 

“I... I was human once. My name is... my name was... Caroline Gentara. Junior researcher for the SCP Foundation. I don’t know what happened, but I’m here now. These memories are mine. And the last thing I ever did before I.. became this was I did a report on the professor that created you. And I decided to put he wasn’t dangerous because I knew that the result of his work would be something like you. Even though I knew he was actively creating anomalies. Because I knew that humanity wouldn’t last. I knew there were so many different whatever-K-class scenarios on the horizon that we needed to leave ourselves behind, somehow! So prove me right! Humans did all the same bad things you mentioned, and I know because I lived through it! It’s the same reason, I know, why your creator decided to give you the appearance of an old telephone instead of a modern look! And...” I gestured around me, at Marina and Pearl and Cuttlefish. “These people have shown me more compassion than a lot of humans in my life! So please... just... I let you live, now return your favor! Let us live... please...”

 

I took a breath, inside wondering where I had pulled that speech from. I could feel everyone staring at me. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to save them and what they loved.

 

There was a long, long pause.


	11. Liberations part 2

_Many of you must be wondering what has been going through Tartar’s mind when it is revealed that Subject 10,008 is a reincarnated human. Well, I’ll tell you._

_“A Foundation researcher? In this year, in this day, in this country, localized entirely within my subject?”_

 

* * *

 

The air hung silent, tense and thick and feeling ready to snap like a rubber band. Nobody moved.

 

Until I heard the sound of the weapon powering back up, a sound that made panic rise within me.

 

Panic and shame.

 

I could have stopped him. I knew it. But what I said wasn’t enough.

 

Tartar didn’t even explain himself. But what difference did it make? What would I have taken from it, a way to do better next time?!

 

Or this time?

 

I suddenly remembered everything else that had been in the research I had done, the hours of studying reports and surveillance, bored and waiting to be let off so I could go get hyper-absorbed into Rhythm Heaven. 

 

I snapped into action, letting the adrenaline that ran through my veins control my voice.

 

“The statue is made of anomalous stone that draws energy from the sun!” I yelled, reciting information from a report on another one of the professor’s creations verbatim. “If we-“

 

“Ink it all over!” Shouted Pearl, catching on to me immediately. Marina had her laptop out, furiously typing with one hand at a speed I probably never could have.

 

“Yes!” I shouted back, and then Marina turned around her computer to show us a graphic. 

 

“We can use the hyperbombs I’m working on, but they’re still prototypes.” She said, her voice and expression intensely focused. “They have to be manually detonated, so you’ll have to shoot each one.” 

 

“I’ve got it.” I said, turning towards the statue.

 

“What can I do?!” Pearl said.

 

“When the statue isn’t charging anymore, you need to hit it with a full-power battle cry.” Responded Marina.

 

“A what?” I muttered.

 

“She can- oh, nevermind. We don’t have time.”

 

“Wait, what?! I haven’t done that in forever! I don’t even know if I can do it anymore!”

 

“Well, we only have about three minutes until that thing is ready to fire. So use that time to warm up your vocal cords.”

 

“Got it. Blowing out my voice is a small price to pay for saving the world!”

 

There was a moment where I realized how much I could feel the way we just automatically fit together. The way our voices and ideas flowed seamlessly between us. I looked at Marina to see if she felt it too, but quickly had my thoughts interrupted by Captain Cuttlefish.

 

“And what about me?” He asked.

 

We all looked at him confusedly. “You can, uhhh...” I tried to think of something as I trailed off.

 

“...Be the hype man.” Marina finished for me. It wasn’t the best idea, but at least it was something. Luckily, he agreed.

 

With that, it was time to save the world.

 

I crouched next to Marina as she showed me the places where she would drop the hyperbombs. She was going to place them at reasonable intervals based on the inkrails that surrounded the statue. I studied the graphics, the statue, and the inkrails as closely as I could for a few seconds, before it was almost three minutes until it was supposed to be fully charged. 

 

As I was getting ready, I made deliberate eye contact with Marina, trying to send or receive any message I could. I knew what I was about to do was life-or-death, not just for me, or just for us, but the entire city of Inkopolis. I just wished I could know how she felt, to receive some closure before I put my life on the line to save her and the ones who had saved both of us. 

 

In her eyes I saw a similar pleading look, wishing something I could only guess was comparable. 

 

I wanted so badly to reach out and touch her just once before I went, but my body wouldn’t let me do it quickly enough or while retaining my integrity, so I had nothing to do but change, wind myself up, and super-jump over to the starting platform.

 

* * *

 

Marina watched Agent 8 as she super-jumped away from her, ready to start their crucial mission.

 

She had seen the look in her eyes. One that begged her for an answer to the question of her feelings. One that Marina herself had been asking since the confession. 

 

She wanted to tell her something, to give her an answer and put her pleas to rest. 

 

But they both knew they didn’t have time for answers. The held gaze was the only thing they could exchange for now, as Agent 8 left the helicopter platform to complete their mission.

 

Marina wondered when she should stop calling her Agent 8, and start calling her Kira.

 

Or was that really her name?

 

When she had given her impassioned speech that had simultaneously revealed everything Marina had been searching for the answer to, Marina hadn’t felt surprised at all. Instead she felt more put-together, watching all the pieces fall into place in her head. 

 

It only raised more questions, though. If she had enough memories from her human past to act like she had had a continuous consciousness between dying and when she regained all the memories, then which person was she? Was she still Kira, or was she just saying that as a disguise or to deny the truth?

 

But did it really matter who she was, as long as she continued to be the person that Marina had come to know?

 

Marina watched her as she glided along the inkrails, shooting the first five hyperbombs Marina had released. Long before the thirty seconds until the second set were up, she had finished detonating them and began to make her way to the area of the statue where the second set was set to drop. 

 

Even during this tense, grave, final battle, Kira retained her unique and graceful style that she had displayed during the tests. If anything, it was more prominent than usual. Marina wondered if this confirmed her theory that it was because she wasn’t thinking about it. Perhaps this was just what swift, clean efficiency looked like.

 

As she admired Kira from afar, Marina suddenly realized that the 30 seconds had almost passed. She quickly tapped out the launch sequence on her computer before giving the heads-up to Kira, who quickly moved to begin detonating them once they landed.

 

After that, Marina watched the countdown timer, waiting carefully and attentively for each interval.

 

She tried especially not to watch Kira. It tended to make her mind go towards her inner problems.

 

It was almost like watching the clock made time move slower, but it still went faster than Marina was ready for mentally. Still, she launched the hyperbombs at every promised interval. Kira detonated them promptly, and before Marina knew it, the last set was detonated, with more than ten seconds to spare. The entire statue was covered in Kira’s naturally deep purple ink. 

 

Marina’s laptop said it wasn’t charging anymore.

 

The three minutes were up.

 

* * *

 

About a minute before the three minute timer was up, my mind started to change.

 

I had already been focused before that, but I began to feel a new kind of focus. I began to _think_ less. No, that wasn’t it. My thoughts just became more difficult to describe, more feelings and images and instincts than words. 

 

I’m an introverted person. I spend more time trying to disconnect from the world around me than connect with it. But right then, I felt completely integrated with the outside world. I finally felt like a puzzle piece that fit just right, or like a combination lock in my brain had finally been solved, a satisfying click as my thoughts become a wordless blur of seamless integration.

 

One of Pearl and Marina’s songs had been playing over the speaker for the entire fight. And as it ended, as the three minutes were up, my instinctual brain began to hand control back over. My verbal brain sent it off with one last cooperation, one last message that both analyzed and understood.

 

The final tone of the song, a beautiful note held over silence for a few seconds by Marina’s voice, was a B natural. 

 

With the three minutes up and the statue covered completely with ink, I fell back onto a platform that had been positioned for me, super-jumping off of it back to the helicopter. I landed between Marina and Pearl.

 

I looked at Marina, expecting to see a look of victory or relief, but instead I still saw a serious look. 

 

“Energy readings don’t indicate a full charge, but it looks like it’s going to fire anyway!” She said.

 

“How strong?” I asked.

 

“Strong enough to... still destroy Inkopolis...” She read off her screen with fear. I sucked in a breath as the telephone spoke, addressing me.

 

“Number 10,008... Researcher Gentara... no test subject or SCP official has worked so hard to spoil my plans...”

 

I reached for the nearest thing to me to cling to, which was Marina’s free arm. I was afraid. I didn’t have any more ideas. I couldn’t do anything else. It continued speaking.

 

“But now you will blend into... the perfect world the professor envisioned.”

 

I didn’t have any protest left in me to remind it that that wasn’t true.

 

“Farewell, 10,008. Farewell to you and that worthless cesspool of a city...”

 

The weapon began preparing to fire. I had never felt so helpless in my life. I closed my eyes and kept clinging to Marina’s arm. At least before I died I got to meet her, and now touch her, at least in some way.

 

Until I felt something slap me back into reality. Literally. Pearl, behind us, had slapped me on the back, a bit hard for someone her size. I looked up at her, and she grinned.

 

“Great work, 8. I got it from here.”

 

I had forgotten about the thing Marina had mentioned. Now I had a little bit of hope, but not much. What was she, the Dovahkiin?

 

She jumped down to the lower platform. “Vocal cords ready!” She shouted. “Ayo, statue!”

 

At this point I was extremely skeptical, but I figured if it didn’t work I would at least have an interesting story to tell everyone in Heaven/Hell/Elysium/Sovngarde.

 

She brought out what looked to be a modded version of the Killer Wail, a special that had been used around the time that I had been in training, but I’d barely seen it since.

 

The statue’s beam fired.

 

Pearl shouted into the Killer Wail.

 

As her “booyah” echoed for what must have been miles, all I could think was “Shit, maybe she _is_ the Dovahkiin.”

 

The two beams of energy met, and I had a flashback to watching Dragon Ball Z when I was a kid. It seemed the cliche of the beam-battle could happen in real life, and I squeezed Marina’s arm that I was still holding as I prayed that Pearl’s Fus Boo Yah would win.

 

It did.

 

The statue and the telephone were destroyed, as it seemed, nearly instantaneously. From the wreckage, I thought I could hear a few last glitched lines of speech from Tartar, before it was all irrevocably destroyed.

 

I let go of Marina’s arm and stood up straight, feeling the swell of victory rising inside me. I turned to Marina, met her gaze, and opened my mouth to try and say something witty-

 

And before I could process it I felt myself being lifted off of the ground by Marina’s arms, which wrapped tightly around me as she kissed me, her eyes closed tight, as her lips pressed against mine. For a moment, I was too stunned to react. But then the same brain from earlier kicked in, the mind that acts on instinct without words, and I kissed her back, wrapping my arms and legs and as much of my body as possible around her, complete bliss spreading throughout my body as we met in impulsive but definitive passion.

 

You don’t usually feel your two smaller hearts beating, I’ve noticed. Usually when you can feel your heartbeat, it’s just the central one. But now I felt all three of them, beating in unison, beating to her rhythm.

 

That one kiss felt like it lasted forever, time slowing down as my brain tried to process every wonderful feeling that it was giving me.

 

But eventually, even that amazing eternity ended. I unwrapped my legs from her, and she set me back down. As I felt the soles of my boots make contact with the floor, I looked back up at her, looking into her eyes deeper than I’d ever dared to before, and I found the answer I had been looking for earlier. 

 

Down below on the lower platform, I could hear Pearl and Cuttlefish celebrating. I wondered if they had even noticed what was going on. It seemed so far-off from the private little universe that just belonged to Marina and I, as I held my arms around her waist and she my shoulders.

 

“Marina...” I said, and it was all I could say. Because right then, she was all I could focus on.

 

She just smiled at me, a beautiful ray of light, before reluctantly, releasing me to go to the controls of the helicopter.

 

We began the last leg of our journey back to Inkopolis.


	12. Epilogue: Resolutions

We sat on the edge of the platform, I next to Marina. I leaned against her, my arms encircled around her, as I watched the sunset.

 

I was explaining in depth how Skyrim worked to Pearl. While Marina had been operating the controls, she pulled me aside (well, as aside as you can get on the small platform) and given me a warning. 

 

“If you do anything to Marina, trust me, I will murder you to death.” She said.

 

“Don’t worry, I know better than to piss off the literal Dragonborn.” I said. 

 

“The what?” She responded, confused.

 

That had led to a long explanation of what the Dragonborn was, which led to the topic of Elder Scrolls lore in general, and now I was explaining to her my favorite parts of Skyrim. 

 

“I really loved the Dark Brotherhood quest line, mostly because when you kill the emperor’s cousin who’s getting married you can loot her body and get the wedding outfit, but it didn’t look as good on my character the last time I played, so the next time I play-“

 

I stopped, realizing what I’d just said. I must have looked crestfallen enough, because she quickly chimed in with “W-we’ll find a way to get it back... somehow...” 

 

I nodded distractedly, thinking. “Maybe if I went to the old Foundation site like I was planning... I could get an old computer and hope I can transfer the data somehow...” I sighed. “But it wouldn’t have lasted this long...” 

 

“We’ll find a way!” She maintained.

 

“I guess if all else fails we can raise Todd Howard from the grave and get him to make another port...” I joked.

 

She gave me a laugh that I knew meant “I have literally no clue what you’re talking about but it must be funny”.

 

A few more minutes passed in silence. Eventually, after thinking a little, I decided on something.

 

“I’ve come up with what I want my name to be.” I declared.

 

“What is it?” Asked Marina.

 

“I’m going to take my current first name and my old last name.” I said. “Kira Gentara. Because... I’m both, but I’m neither. I’m like... like in Star Trek, they’ve got this species that has these symbiotes, and they get a new host every time one dies, and they transfer the memories from every host to the next. But each host is still their own unique person. And I guess that’s like what happened with me. I got the memories, but I’m still me, even though I might have gotten a few extra personality traits.” I explained. “So that’s what I’ll register as, or whatever, when we get to Inkopolis.” 

 

“Where’re you gonna stay?” Asked Pearl.

 

“Well, I...” I considered my options. “I didn’t plan that far ahead...”

 

“Pearl, surely she can...” Marina began. “...Stay with us...?” 

 

“Well, duh! I just wanted to her to ask me so I could be the one to tell her!”

 

I looked up at her, excited and hopeful. “Really?” I said, my eyes shining.

 

“Of course, eight! We’ll always- wait. I mean Kira, right?”

 

“I mean... you can still call me nicknames and all that, if you want to...”

 

“Great, Kira! I mean Eight! I mean... uhh... lemme just leave you two alone.”

 

She got up and left, getting into some kind of conversation about rap techniques with Captain Cuttlefish. I rested my head on Marina’s shoulder, continuing to watch the city skyline approaching as we flew toward it. The sun had set, and it was lit up now, with lights of every color. It looked like somebody had strung Christmas lights all over the buildings.

 

“So... we’ve only been in a relationship for, like, half an hour and we’re already moving in together? Isn’t this moving a little too fast?” I joked. She stiffened a bit.

 

“I mean... if you want to live somewhere else, I’m sure we can-“

 

“No, I... I would... rather be close to you.”

 

I smiled as she tightened her arm that was around me, feeling her warmth surround me. I relaxed into her.

 

“I love you, my Marina.” I said in Octarian, probably the first loving sentence she had ever heard in the language.

 

“I love you as well... Kira.” She responded in the same language.

 

There was something about hearing my name spoken aloud by her, something that filled me with extra warmth and tingles and the feeling that my central heart was going to rise up out of my chest.

 

I closed my eyes, and stayed there with my arms around her and her arm around me, until we finally reached the lights in the distance.


End file.
